lessons from long-haul acceptance
Practising acceptance
I was fortunate to have recently travelled to Australia to visit family that I haven’t seen in eight years. It was truly a gift to get to know my niece and nephew in particular who have become adults since I saw them last!
I find travel an interesting opportunity to observe people's behaviour, and to observe my own responses and reactions. In this article, I’m going to focus on my observations around patience and acceptance when travelling across the world.
As you may know, I'm a qualified mindfulness teacher and have plans to teach mindfulness workshops in the near future. I’ve personally practised (almost) daily meditation for the last few years, which has helped me to become more aware of my choices and my automatic behaviours. One regular practice I use during daily life, as recommended by the wonderful monk Gelong Thubten in his books and live talks, is to practice acceptance and mindfulness during times when we have to wait for something. So, in my daily life, I try and use these opportunities as a chance to practice being mindful. Times such as when we're waiting in a queue at the supermarket or sitting in a traffic jam. He suggests that these are fantastic opportunities for practising mindfulness because our natural instinct is to become irritated or frustrated by having to wait. They are not typically a highly challenging time, and so they provide just enough of a challenge to practice moving away from feeling anger or frustration and instead moving towards being present in the moment and eventually towards enjoying a sense of peace and stillness. I can highly recommend Gelong Thubtens' books 'Handbook for hard times' and 'A monk's guide to happiness' which both contain lots of guided meditations. He's also contributed to many of Ruby Wax's books on mindfulness too.
At times during my travels I became aware of a sense of resistance to what is happening amongst the people around me. One particular moment was at the boarding gate where there appeared to be a delay in the boarding process and everybody had already jumped up to join a very long queue to board the aircraft. There were no announcements, and nobody appeared to be moving. I could hear people around me becoming very frustrated by this delay - tutting, shuffling, huffing and puffing, looking around to try and find the cause of the wait, or criticising the airline staff. I noticed that I was not feeling the same level of frustration and was able to stay present in the moment and able to accept the situation for what it was. I chose to use the opportunity to stand, stretch and move a little before boarding the plane.
I also noticed this sense of irritability when, after a very long flight, our plane was unable to go to the parking bay because it was blocked by another aircraft. We had an additional hour sitting in the plane, having landed at our final destination, but not able to get off. I could sense a lot of people becoming irritated and tense, and I began to feel the same way. However, I was able to tune into my feelings, took a few calming breaths, realised that there was nothing I could do to get off the plane any quicker, and used the opportunity to challenge myself on the Solitaire card game on the in-flight entertainment screen while I waited!
In these specific scenarios, there was nothing I could do to change the situation, and so being able to foster a sense of acceptance was really helpful. Even better was being able to go beyond acceptance and use these small challenges as an opportunity to enjoy practicing mindfulness. The techniques of mindfulness and Breathwork have been really beneficial during this recent long-haul travel, as well as in my everyday life. If you are interested in learning more about how these tools could help you to find more moments of calm in your busy life, check out my next workshops for Breathwork here or mindfulness here